Boy

The short, dark haired African American woman had a severe cough from smoking a pack a day. This was Ryan's mother. Clearly, to anyone with eyes, this was not her real mother; she was one of those who chose to adopt a crack baby in order to get a pension from the state. Nights at the strip club she worked at, as a bartender, were starting to prove not to be enough to pay for her broken down, mice infested apartment.

But over the years, Ryan grew to love her mother more than anything. And though, not one to show much affection, her mother felt the same.

After fumbling with her keys for five minutes, then having to kick the door in, Ryan walked into her apartment and set her bag by the door. She heard coughing from the kitchen.

"That you, Ry?" her mother said, hoarsely.

"Yeah it's me, Ma." Ryan said, walking into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator.

She moved around boxes of Chinese food and Tupperware filled with something turned green or yellow, looking for something to eat.

"You can eat at the club, baby," her mother said, pressing the tip of her cigarette on a newspaper to put it out. Ryan stood up straight and closed the refrigerator.

"What do you mean?"

"I have to work tonight," she said.

"But why do I have to go?"

"Honey, you know I do not feel comfortable leavin' you in this apartment wit' a bunch of crazy folks. Lord knows what could happen to you," she said, shaking her head. Then she took two bobby pins out of her bun and removed the rubber band holding up her ponytail, letting her black, thick hair fall to her shoulders.

"You aint never had a problem with it before!" Ryan said, whining.

"Hush up, Ryan. Then Mrs. Mayberry was across the hall to check on you. She died this morning." Ryan's eyes widened.

"Wh-what….she died?" Her mother simply nodded.

"Heart attack. Shame, too. I swear, she was the only woman 'round these parts that I thought had to be one hundred percent decent. I'm gonna miss how she would offer to feed us, or even wash your clothes. And the way she meticulously folded them, you think they came right from the store."

Despite, her mother's bad English or formation of sentences, for some reason she had a tendency to drop words like meticulous.

"Oh…" Ryan said, feeling guilty and pretty sad all of a sudden.

"Go get out ya school clothes, girl."

Ryan walked to her room down the extremely narrow hallway and started looking through her drawers. Eventually she found something to wear, and went back out to see her mother, who was dressed in all black, as her job called for, but showing an awful lot of cleavage.

Her mother led her in through the back door of the strip club and held her hand as they passed, men (who had been fortunate enough to be led to the back) getting sucked off, lap danced, and things that Ryan tried to avert her eyes from. In all her sixteen years, she'd seen more than even some adults had.

"Okay, I want you to sit quietly by the bar, hear?"

"Yes, mom." Ryan said, nodding.

"And don't give any information to strangers." She nodded once again.

"Angie! You're fuckin late, you know that!?"

"I'm comin!" her mother yelled back at the person who had spoken. She walked off and got behind the counter, immediately taking orders and tips. Ryan went over and sat at the last stool by the bar and looked around.

As many times as she'd seen it, strippers gave her the creeps. She could imagine some were pretty normal, but most of them, she thought, had to be crawling with herpes or genital warts or something. This club was so popular, because sometimes, it wasn't just a show, it was the full experience if you shoved enough bills down their underwear. Big tippers got taken to separate rooms, or backstage. To Ryan, it was more like a whore house.

"You don't I see you up there, huh?" this drunk, fat, older guy said loudly, slapping her mother's butt. Then he waved a hundred dollar bill in the air. "If I give you this, will you make me happy?"

Her mother simply smiled and moved on to serve the next person. If Ryan had this job, she thought, the guy would be on the ground with a broken jaw by now.

"Now, what's a cute innocent little thing like you doing 'round these parts?" a guy said, walking over to her and touching her cheek.

Immediately, she jerked her face away, then ignored the question.

"I asked you something," he said, trying to sound as if he were an authority figure.

"None of your business," she said bravely to the man who's breath wreaked of whiskey. His face contorted into an angry sneer and he grabbed her face.

"You listen to me, you little brat…" She struggled, until she resorted to kicking him in the groin. He let go and held his crotch, his face turned the color of a tomato. Ryan ran to the other side of the bar and sat there, remembering just how much she hated this place.